peregrinf: Blog

Little Things Bother Me

Anyway, dialogue -- it drives me nuts when a character says something like "I will be busy all day and will not have time to talk."

How many people really talk that way? Doesn't "I will be busy all day and won't have time to talk" sound better. There's even an emphasis there about being busy all day. If the speaker isn't trying to drive that point home, "I'll be busy all day and won't have time to talk" works even better.

Listen to the way people talk. Hear your characters talk in your head.

And yeah. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. 16 different versions of Dee STP 26 before it was ready to post. I'm obsessive compulsive.